by V. Castro
Hector and I watched the video at least ten times. We couldn’t explain away our experiences. Marie sent a box full of books, herbs, oils and candles at Hector’s request for the first time in his life. Marie did not hesitate to send it. She wanted to visit, to see for herself, but he warned her off, just in case this wasn’t a benevolent force. Marie had two children at home who needed her.
Hector sat at the kitchen table, reading books recommended by his sister on the history of curanderos and their practices. He looked like a student preparing for finals. The world was changing, and we had to change with it. More people wanted to venture into the house to see if the phenomenon was true, but it remained closed. The governor of Texas was allowed to use army reserves to keep a perimeter around the house to avoid vandals or intruders.
Both of our past lives were getting pulled into the narrative of La Reina de Las Chicharras. Thank God the worst of it was during the Triassic No Social Media Era. If there was no post, did it really happen? My son was beginning to worry. We Skyped regularly, as he was following every bit of information about this new goddess that wasn’t so new. He told me I should keep a video diary or write everything down. His curiosity scared me, but it brought him closer to me. I cherished every call that went from minutes to hours. Now he wanted to take that trip. He wanted to explore his Mexican roots. I gave him a list of books to read for discussion on our next chat. This boy was not a reader in the slightest, but he jumped at the chance. His friends were saying I was a bit of a celebrity. I guess I was, considering I didn’t really do anything of merit except be at a place and time where things were happening. Dumb luck. At least, I thought it was.
Then, after watching an interview, Hector had an idea that would change our lives forever. It was a man slightly older than us, Dave Bradford. He was born and raised in Alice but left as soon as he turned eighteen and never returned. We watched his story along with millions of others around the world.
* * *
It started with a group of boys in 1985: Dave, Marcus and Fernando ventured out to the farm as a dare on Halloween night. The sped on their bikes through the darkness, but had to hop off once they reached the edge of the farm. The grass was impossible to navigate in its wild overgrowth. Before entering, they stopped to look at the decrepit house with the outline of the spire piercing the full moon. Marcus took out a flashlight from his backpack. The tube of light shone brightly at the door, which appeared open.
“If this bitch is real, I want to see her,” remarked Fernando.
“Pass the fucking pipe. I need a hit before we do this.” Marcus pulled out a palm-sized glass bong, put it to his lips, and inhaled deeply.
Dave looked at the house, feeling uneasy as his friends moved towards the door. He placed a headlamp that had been tucked in his back pocket around his forehead. With ease the door creaked wide open. Dave looked from side to side to inspect the surroundings. There was something heavy about this place, and it stunk. “Let’s just do it and go.”
“All right, Davey boy. Say it first! Don’t be a pussy!”
Fernando and Marcus laughed in a cloud of suffocating weed smoke that was a welcome change of smell from piss and animal shit.
“La Reina de Las Chicharras. Is that right, Fernando? You’re Mexican. Not me.”
“You know I don’t speak Spanish,” Fernando said as he tried not to exhale the smoke from another hit of the bong.
Marcus took another deep hit. “La Reina de Las Chicharras! Chicharrachicharrachicharra. I got an A in Spanish last report card.”
The house was silent for a few seconds while they waited for something to happen. Then the three burst into laughter.
“Give me that.” Dave grabbed the bong from Marcus, feeling stupid for allowing his grandparents’ tales of the farm to get to him. His great uncle made deliveries here and said he witnessed things he didn’t believe were real. And so much death. The land was dead. Those stories kept Dave up for weeks. It was nothing after all. Before he could bring the bong to his lips, the creaking sound of a door could be heard above their heads. Marcus turned the flashlight to the noise and Dave whipped his head in the same direction. Both beams of light caught the figure at the top of the stairs.
“You called?”
The three teens gawked, not believing what they were seeing with their own eyes. They were high. This couldn’t be real. There stood a woman in tattered clothing stained with blood that oozed from her neck. A chunk of scalp could be seen missing. Her skin looked speckled in red and purple raised welts. Dave couldn’t tell if it was the darkness or if her eyes were really that black. It was the kind of black that had no end, like death. The boys stood motionless. Marcus thought someone was dressed up for Halloween, doing the same as them, or it was the weed.
“Holy shit, guys. Are you s-seeing this?” he stammered.
Dave and Fernando wordlessly nodded.
“You called for me? Hear my name, Milagros! La Reina de Las Chicharras.” Her jaw unhinged, releasing wasps, flies, hornets, and cicadas into the house. The buzz increased as they jerked in different directions in a black cloud, surrounding the boys without stinging. “Tell them you saw me! We are here!”
The three screamed in unison, scrambled out of the house and into the fields then scattered towards their homes on their bikes. With the other boys gone, Dave pumped his arms hard as he ran to his bike. He allowed tears to stream from the corners of his eyes.
It’s real. Holy shit, it’s real! he kept repeating to himself as he pedaled home.
When he saw the light of his front porch, he ditched the bike and ran into his house directly to his bedroom, ignoring his family. He slept in his clothes with the lights on and the sheet tucked all the way to his chin.
The following day at school, the boys met up during first-period break. Not one had slept.
“Dude, what happened? Did I imagine that?”
“It was real. We’ve smoked that bag of weed before. There’s nothing extra in it. I saw her! Heard her!”
“Heard what, you nerds?” Candice Gonzalez leaned against the locker with Mary Freeman. Usually the boys got all cocky when they were around, but not today. Today they looked like they did in elementary school before a test, but also like they rolled out of bed without a shower or brushing their teeth before school.
Dave was the first to speak. “Look into a mirror and say, ‘La Reina de Las Chicharras. Chicharrachicharrachicharra.’ See what happens.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “I’ve done Bloody Mary and nothing happens. Nice try, assholes. Halloween was yesterday. Come on, Candice.”
Candice watched the ashen-faced boys still huddled together like frightened children, talking low so no one could hear. She had heard stories about a haunted farm. How could she ever escape the tales of La Llorona? She would try it with Mary and Linda tonight. Probably nothing would happen.
Chapter Eleven
“If I want to try something, will you hear me out? I did it when I was in New York and if I didn’t do it, I would probably still be with Tom. I can only imagine the anger I would harbor towards him, and myself, if I didn’t find the courage to tell him what I really wanted and needed in our relationship. I didn’t tell my family about it because they would have badgered me to do it in Mexico, or tell me they know a guy who knows a guy who can bless the damn bag of fungus. I wanted an unbiased experience. We should try to reach out to her. Maybe we can breach the border of our worlds.”
Hector pulled out a bag of shriveled mushrooms and waved it in the air. “I know they look like a bag of gross dicks and smell just as bad as a high school gym locker room, but these are strong, stronger than what you’ll find in Amsterdam, or anywhere else I’m told.”
I snatched the bag away, laughing. It made me think of the time I first tried mushrooms. The party kind, nothing blessed. Broke as hell, I don’t know how my friend and I got hold of them. Maybe someone
I fucked. We sat in the chain coffee shop with Americanos in front of us. The flaky dried hallucinogenic meal went down easy with a mouthful of coffee. Minutes passed before I needed the toilet. Unimpressed with my lack of visions, I walked the barren corridor, which continued to extend with time. My brain became more like spaghetti with every step. I didn’t know where I was or why I was even there. It stuck me I might be stuck in a haunted hotel with dead people wanting to feed on my soul. No, I was lost in that coffee shop, lost in debt, lost in not knowing what I should do with my life or why I was even born in the first place.
My friend finally found me unable to move in front of the bathroom door with a sign that read ‘out of order’.. We wandered back, forgetting our coffees, and ventured into the icy winter night in Philadelphia far from our family homes in Texas. I always hated the cold. It never felt right.
I was hoping to find her again, find definite answers. It was my thinking we would have better luck taking hallucinogenic drugs than using some shit eBay Ouija board. Hector could have told me we were climbing Everest without oxygen. I was ready. “Tell me when.”
Hector contacted his cousin, Manolo, in Catemaco, who was also a curandero from a long line of male curanderos, for any advice on enhancing the experience with the drug and to bless the house. He was the one who sourced them for Hector. Manolo refused to enter the US for fear of never returning, or worse. He’d heard the stories about the border and was terrified. There was evil at work and he wanted no part of it. We decided to ask Pastor Rich to keep an eye on us. This would be a bootleg, shoestring ceremony of enlightenment.
* * *
The old man sat in the pew, switching from scribbling down ideas for his next sermon to rubbing his chest, which was nothing but fire these days. Not a single thought came to mind that he felt passionate about. Not that it mattered. Year after year his congregation was whittled down as people flocked to the big churches on the highway with a full band, lights and cameras. He was a spiritual dinosaur on the eve of the spiritual apocalypse. His brain was tied up thinking about the proof, actual proof there was something else out there. When the spirit, or whatever it was at Hector’s house, made an appearance, no one noticed the old man on the stairs watching everything, hearing that voice. He couldn’t help but feel angry it wasn’t a sign from his God performing miracles like the ones in the Bible during a time in history that needed a miracle or two to get mankind to survive longer than another century. He cursed his doubt. But wasn’t that where faith was supposed to come in? At that moment he had no desire to believe in something else that might not be of God, or pure. It killed that boy, after all. It took Tanya’s heart.
Then his thoughts shifted to Janice, that doomed infatuation that could have been love. Finding out she was pregnant at the time of her death, and that she had been involved in the murder, closed him off forever. His innocence was lost the day he saw Milagros on the tree. He never trusted himself with love again, only the love he felt for God, and now that was being taken away. He put the pad and pencil down and closed his eyes. Before a prayer could escape his lips, the click of the storage room door could be heard.
It slowly opened.
Two shiny marbles reflecting the light from the large windows in the main vestibule stared at him. His soul was ready and so was his body. Most of the people he knew and loved were dead or in ill health. He was beginning to feel like the only one left alive and only half alive at that. Lately he felt weak, sick. But he could still get to his feet unaided. He stood to face the eyes.
“You can’t have my soul, demon.”
A deep laugh like notes from a cello escaped the room. “I know your soul cannot be mine. It belongs to your God. He is such a jealous God and one even I do not want to cross. This is his realm, for the most part. Besides, I have already fed on another.”
Pastor Rich stepped forward to show his defiance. “I know. Tanya. She’s dead.”
“Yes. And please don’t call me a demon. I am nothing of the sort because such things do not exist in my world. I’m a visitor from a place beyond where this universe ends and another begins. I am one that fills the voids of your imagination. I’m neither evil nor good, kind or hateful. I just am.”
“What do you want from me? I’m not scared of you.” He waited for her to show herself, but the Queen remained in the dark.
“I want you to be Hector and Belinda’s guide. Give them spiritual guidance, just as you have with so many others in your long life. You need not fear me. You were good to Milagros and the people of the field by learning their language and offering aid when you could over the years. I have no quarrel with you.”
“Please don’t harm anyone else. It’s wrong.”
The thing in the closet let out a screeching hiss. “Don’t preach to me about wrong, not on this soil. The soil of this continent is a mound of congealed blood and shredded, whipped flesh that is tilled century after century with an iron rake of hate. And the churches of the word. What chaos they have made!”
He was too old and had seen too much to argue with that. “I’ll do my best for Belinda and Hector because they’re good people. Not my place to judge. I serve only one God.” Pastor Rich didn’t trust the thing, but he found no reason to go against its wishes.
“Thank you. Don’t worry, old man, you will see your God soon enough. Would you like me to show you?”
The offer was tempting, to see how he would die. His pulse quickened in a way that scared him at his age. One odd palpitation could be the end.
“No, just let it be. I know it will be soon.”
The two lights were gone. Pastor Rich jumped at the sound of the doors behind him opening. Speak of the Devil.
* * *
Before we could ask our question with a very rehearsed explanation, Pastor Rich waved us forward. “Go on, I’m listening. My answer is yes, but I still want to hear it.”
We gave him the long explanation of our needing a spiritual guide while in a drug-induced state.
“I’ll do as you ask, but I have to tell you I don’t agree with drugs. We had AA meetings here for a spell. I saw so many boys leave for Vietnam and return a mess from that stuff. Buried a few over the years, too. Not that it was the drugs’ fault. That damn war. I won’t ever forget the stories told to me right here in this church. No one should see that. No one should experience that, anywhere. My hope is to die before I see any more wars. When do you want to do this?”
We wanted to do it the following day.
* * *
We opened the main living room for the first time since the death of the boy. Dust clung to stale air, but nothing felt off about the room. It was so clean – thanks to a hired crew – you would have never known anything had occurred. I was happy Pastor Rich was there because we knew him. We had no idea what would happen.
Hector and I sat facing each other. Pastor Rich sat next to us with his Bible at one side. We brought the dried mushrooms to our lips and chewed, then washed them down with cold water. The journey began as a whirlpool in my mouth, traveling to my stomach. I thought of the time I gave my first blow job at nineteen and how the semen crashed against my tongue, slightly choking me as it went down in globs. I was excited and slightly sickened. My empty belly accepted the sludge.
* * *
As the mushrooms take effect, I’m taken back to my first sleepover at nine and my friend Rosa wants to play house. Wearing only oversized t-shirts before bed, she’s the dad and I’m the mom. She shoves her tongue in my mouth and her hand down my panties without warning. I don’t know what she’s doing or how she knows any of this, but I know I don’t like playing house this way. I tell her we should watch a horror film instead. Something shatters in me after that. Is it wrong, or right? I feel confused and shaken. The TV is on and I fall asleep to Demons.
My brain is wrapped in warm cloth, the kind they put on your face before a facial or the kind you do at hom
e when the hangover is unbearable. I’m alone in a dark room that soon becomes filled with house music pounding rhythmically against my chest. I can feel the vibrations of sound fighting against my skin until it breaks through to reach my core. There are people I don’t know, yet I want to kiss them all. Spinning, dancing, high as a fucking kite on ecstasy, I’m twenty-one, in a club with an escort I work with. Faces are rubbed-out contorted shadows of strobe lighting and their hair is something you would see on the back of a lizard. In these days my switch is always swinging between self-destruct mode and getting by. All these things I have to do to just get by. The dizziness is like the dazzling light I stare at while the doctors cut me open as I wait to see my child. The only emotion is the dread that my life will never be the same again, but I don’t know how. I can’t see past that moment because there is nothing to adequately prepare you for parenthood in the history of mankind. There is no pain or sound, just that light staring back at me. The light is cut short. I’ve blacked out after a night out with girlfriends, knowing I have to end things. I grip the handrail of my staircase, falling twice. Instead of standing, I crawl to my bedroom and fall against the door as I tell my then husband I want a divorce. I don’t remember any of this. I only remember what he tells me and a few other little pieces. He doesn’t want a woman like me anyway, a bad drunk, someone so restless. Who would? Who in their right mind would ever want me?
I close my eyes, which are already shut. There she is, Mictecacíhuatl, in the middle of a cave with stalactites above her head. It is silent except for the sound of water droplets hitting small pools around our feet. Her entire body is a naked shade of crimson rope looking as soft as velvet. I want her to let me in. Her head is adorned with vibrant green quetzal feathers attached to an embroidered band. She wears a double string of jade stones around her neck, so shiny they almost glow. She takes off her headdress and motions for me. She wants me to come closer and feel Milagros. Clear fluid is draining from between her legs. It is almost time. With her abdominal muscles separated, I can see the child inside of her uterus, which is like a translucent plastic bag. The little pink thing floats in contentment despite the womb contracting, guiding the infant out into the world. Mictecacíhuatl squats in a birthing position in a shallow pool of water and I kneel before her. Between her legs I can see the head of a baby crowning. I don’t know what to do, but I know I am the only one who can do it. From the shadows, indigenous women dressed in warriors’ armor decorated like the coat of a jaguar emerge and surround my Queen. This armor is usually reserved for men. They steady her arms around their shoulders to make pushing more comfortable. She doesn’t scream or cry; only chants, “La Reina de Las Chicharras”, over and over until she lets out a moan that sounds more like an orgasm than a shout of childbirth pain.
